Mummymania

You know what’s cool about National Review? It lets me write about mummies. From my latest article:

That’s the thing about mummies: They wake up cranky. As surely as Halloween mummies wrap themselves in toilet paper, every mummy tale comes with a curse — the enduring cliché that disturbing the eternal slumber of embalmed Egyptians is a rotten idea. They terrorize the mortals, taking their sinister place as familiar horrors alongside vampires, werewolves, and witches. The difference is that, unlike their monstrous brethren, revitalized mummies don’t emerge from traditional folklore: They’re a modern invention.